Chef Trades $140 Tasting Menu Feasts for $5 Tacos: Ryan Sutton

By Ryan Sutton -
May 18, 2011

Alex Stupak used to run pastry
kitchens so high-tech they could’ve been classified by the
Defense Department. Now he’s selling $5 tacos.

No more hydrocolloids, rotary evaporators or liquid
nitrogen. Stupak served some of the country’s best sweets at
Alinea and WD-50. He’s given up $140 tasting menus in favor of
Mexican food at Empellon in Manhattan’s West Village.

It’s as if Ken Burns ditched documentaries to reboot the
“Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. I’m happy to report that
a few of Stupak’s sopes, ceviches and tacos are very good. Other
items require fixing.

This is no chips and salsa joint. I know this because a
waiter shook his head when I asked for chips and salsa. The
chef’s ambitious are high -- to embrace, as he says on his
website, “the depth of Mexican cuisine for what it is while
pushing toward what it might become.”

Translation: You can only get chips and salsa with
guacamole. But the guacamole, $10, is a mediocre mash of avocado
with none of the seasoning or depth of flavor you get,
apologies, at Dos Caminos.

Work-In-Progress

Fair enough. We’ve grown accustomed (or resigned) to paying
for excellent artisanal bread at casual spots. So I’ll support
Stupak’s intransigence -- just as soon as he starts making
better food.

Right now, it’s a work in progress. If you want great guac,
go to the original home of Mexican street food raised to more
refined heights, Rosa Mexicano.

Salt, hot sauces and salsas belong on the table. Instead
they must be requested from the kitchen. How very fine-dining.
And how very frustrating, since many dishes lack sodium, spice
or acid. Chicharron -- pork rinds whose flavor is as
monochromatic as their color -- leave enough oil on the hands to
grease a pig.

There is redemption. Those $8 chicharron come with a
Veracruz sauce, bitter and briny. Busboys try to remove the
unfinished condiment from your table; resist. Spoon it over the
dry, stringy, short-rib tamales, should you accidentally order
them.

Foul Fowel

Tequila-cured salmon with sangrita evokes the fishiness of
an old tackle box and the generic flavors of supermarket salsa.
Stupak, a chef who’s “only slightly less intense than a
Marine,” an Empellon staffer told me, shouldn’t be letting some
of this food leave the kitchen. Long Island duck breast arrived
overcooked and carried a foul aftertaste.

On a recent evening, the bartender advised patrons to
arrive late to avoid high noise levels. “It doesn’t help that
it’s all hard surfaces inside,” he said.

Indeed, even understanding the wait staff can be a
challenge amid the din. Perhaps aware of this, the servers
sometimes fail to describe the multiple and complex components
of, say, your turbot entree.

There are mustard greens and pumpkin seed puree, but you’ve
stopped eating by now because the filets are so over-salted you
end up chugging your sparkling Gruner Veltliner.

Empellon is solid for snacks. Start off with white tuna
ceviche. Just the right amount of luscious oil seeps out,
softening the sweet slap of guava puree.

Follow up with fried masa cakes anointed with the smoky
kiss of chipotle-and-tomato-simmered meatballs. Tlatonile, a
rich chili-sesame sauce native to Mexico’s Huatusco region,
turns sweetbreads into de facto General Tso’s chicken, a good
thing.

No Cointreau

Wash down the grub with sour margaritas. The bracing
libations omit the traditional orange liquor, a clever move that
makes them tequila daiquiris. The reposado shines through with
just a little agave nectar and lime; no Cointreau or Grand
Marnier get in the way of things.

Now that the palate is primed, have a few tacos (two for
$12). Lamb barbacoa is the right call; salsa borracha (Oaxacan
chilies, orange juice) counters the rich meat. Scotch eggs --
deep fried with chorizo -- are an impressively gooey version of
the British pub staple.

Shrimp manage to keep their oceanic flavor while wrapped in
hearty corn tortillas imported from the Nixtamal factory in
Corona, Queens. Avoid the arid chicken tacos.

Desserts are awesome. They come courtesy of Lauren Resler,
Stupak’s wife, who uses goat’s milk ice cream to balance the
sugar shock in a tres leches cake. Even better is the cookie
plate -- a mix of snickerdoodles, cochinitos and others. Which
cookies are which? A member of the management team couldn’t
answer with a straight face. Oops.